


only the mad are sane

by Marenke



Series: the quaren-fics [17]
Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare, Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Attempted Murder, F/F, Historical Inaccuracy, Implied/Referenced Abortion, working title: ophelia and juliet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:46:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23851039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marenke/pseuds/Marenke
Summary: Her father says that this girl from Denmark is mad.
Relationships: Juliet Capulet/Ophelia (Hamlet)
Series: the quaren-fics [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1896019
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	only the mad are sane

**Author's Note:**

> folks at the fbicord were like romeo and juliet is dumb and i was like aight let me fix it  
> it became. this  
> anyway list of tws bc jesus christ  
> \- abortion (implied)  
> \- attempted murder (mentioned)  
> \- the usual hamlet tomfoolishlery  
> \- the usual romeo and juliet bullshittery  
> anyway i have a vague timeline in mind so if you're confused. ask me

Her father says that this girl from Denmark is mad. She’s on her way to Venice (“She needs fresh air, poor thing”, her mother coos over dinner as a way of explanation), and for the fortnight she and her entourage are to rest on the Capulet’s house.

Juliet has been told: _stay away_. Juliet, who was never actually quite good at following rules, does not. The whole Romeo debacle is proof enough; she’s not even sure how she’s not in a nunnery or married off, after all she has done.

Perhaps her parents have learned some sort of lesson. Perhaps not. Who knows? Juliet doesn’t, and also does not care. As long as she is free to do whatever she pleases, the concerns of her parents matter not to her.

So the girl comes. She’s beautiful, in the same sense a little bird is: languid, fluid, and with eyes that look without really looking, and know without ever knowing. She’s pale, paler than Juliet’s dark skin, and her hair is a fine blonde that’s almost white. She’s a stained glass from the church, dressed in white and mad. A holy figure, sans the holiness. 

A little songbird in a white cage, wings cut off so she can’t fly.

She says her name is Ophelia. Juliet greets her politely, black hair falling in front of brown eyes (because she’s mad as well and mad girls have freedoms sane girls do not and Juliet is _nothing_ but opportunistic now), and she stares at Ophelia.

Ophelia is translucent, almost. She’s beautiful in a way that is different from Juliet's own beauty: Juliet is a bonfire, a second away from setting a forest ablaze, too hot and dangerous to be contained safely, while Ophelia is the calm before a storm, grey and windy and demure.

When night comes, her nurse locks Juliet into her own room until dawn comes. That’s not a problem. She goes to her balcony, climbs the vines to the side (they keep the ones closer to the ground carefully cut, impossibilitating her from running away again. The ones covering the wall, not so much) and jumps, balcony to window to balcony like a stray cat, until she reaches the wing where the guests stay. 

_Some_ things that Romeo taught her were useful, after all.

On the balcony, Ophelia in white, Juliet unable to discern what is skin, what is hair, what is fabric: she’s picking at the fragrant flowers, shining in the gentle moonlight. She’s mumbling a song to herself, and Juliet, crouched on the balcony, cocks her head.

“Aren’t those poisonous, little songbird?” She asks Ophelia, and the girl looks at her, as if Juliet’s visit was expected, as if this was pre-arranged.

“What _isn’t_ , kitten?” Ophelia replies. Juliet nods. “You know, the door is the other way. You could’ve come that way.”

“My nurse locks mine.”

Ophelia smiles. She has this easy smile, gummy and kind.

“That's funny. My door is locked as well.” She starts to pluck off the petals, and they scatter to the ground. They match her white nightdress. “Mad?”

“Oh, absolutely. I assume you, too?” Juliet shrugged, sitting down properly. A glance down tells her of a pair of asleep guards. “These two don’t seem too useful.”

Ophelia does not reply. She is busy, ripping the petals in half. All she does is hum something that might be an agreement, might be nothing.

She’s curious. Ophelia throws the petals away, watches them fall, and looks at Juliet. 

“They’ve ruined you like they've ruined me.” It’s not a question. Juliet shrugs, and Ophelia, as if she is air, simply goes inside her own room, drawing the curtains closed. Juliet knows when she is supposed to take her leave, so she does, jumping and climbing back to her room.

Looking wistfully behind her, Juliet couldn’t help but smile. Ophelia seemed like her.

* * *

At breakfast, Ophelia eats daintily and quietly, ripping apart bread and eating with her hands like it is nothing to her. By the side of her plate, there’s the finest silver her family can afford available, unused.

Juliet looks at her. Her father isn’t looking at Ophelia, pretending to not see, just as her mother does. She makes a motion to abandon her own utensils, but her nurse pinches her discreetly enough for her to reconsider.

When breakfast is over, Juliet is taken back to her room, given something to sew and clear orders: _stay away from Ophelia_. Juliet smiles, nods, starts sewing. 

Her nurse starts well enough: she sews, sews, sews. Juliet accompanies her, humming along to the chattering her nurse provides, barely paying attention to the gossip from the outside she brings. Juliet doesn’t care; she’s been subjected to the eyes of Verona for enough time to know it’s not a pleasant feeling to be watched.

She has been with her nurse for enough time to know that she can only take so much sewing before she falls asleep. It’s just a question of time, so Juliet lets her speak as much as she wants.

So when she falls asleep, Juliet first tests the lock; when she finds it unlocked, she hums to herself, and goes outside her own room, breathing in and scurrying to the visitor’s wing. The house has secret tunnels inside its walls, and Juliet mapped them extensively during her childhood years. Most of them - the obvious ones, at least - have been sealed away after the Romeo debacle, but that’s not a problem. She goes in and out of the secret tunnels, stepping in silence and avoiding the obvious guards, the traps, the rooms where her father speaks with other important men.

There’s the girl’s guards there, waiting at the door, looking around and bored. Juliet ducks out of the main hallway, and goes to the secret tunnel, feeling her way through the walls until she finds the tapestry she’s looking for. It feels rough against her hands, and she knows it's the right one.

Putting her head inside, she finds Ophelia there, laying in bed, looking up. She hears her before she sees her, because when Juliet looks, Ophelia is staring at her.

“Kitten, I see you’ve found your way to me again.” She says, rising from bed. Her clothes are white, and she’s pale as milk.

It’s a living ghost, intermingled with the sheets. Is Ophelia really alive? Juliet can’t say.

“Songbird.” Juliet retorts, natural as breathing, as she slides inside the room. “I’m curious. I haven’t had many visitors, you see.”

“I can imagine. Sit, sit.” She gestured to the bed, and Juliet obeyed. When she had sat down, Ophelia cocked her head. “You remind me of Hamlet.”

Hamlet; she had heard of him. King of Denmark after a bloody struggle. She hadn’t had heard many details; her parents kept her out of the loop. What Juliet does not know won’t hurt her.

Right.

“In a good way?”

She scoffs at that, and her pale eyes wander around the room, as she rises from the bed.

“I’m not - I’m not going to Venice for fun.” She spins in place, swirling until she’s a hurricane of white fabric. “Hamlet is going to marry. He’s going to marry some Norwegian princess, even though he promised me, after - after - after.”

She deflates, stops spinning. _After_. Juliet can guess what was _after_. She will guess it’s the same after Romeo promised her.

“He took everything I had. Everything that mattered. They took me from my home, and said: _this is so you don’t kill him. This is so you don’t kill her_ _._ They took my child, my...”

A hand upon her stomach. Juliet nodded, solemn.

“Pennyroyal?”

“Rue. Sometimes I can still feel it, like a surface upon my teeth, tainting everything I eat.”

She knew what Ophelia meant; the taste of the medicine was still heavy on her tongue, too.

* * *

Juliet returns to her room before her nurse wakes up, and she’s the pitch perfect picture of the good maiden. If only that entire thing hadn’t happened, she might be.

Her nurse does not suspect a thing. She smiles and coos over Juliet’s embroidering until her eyes process that Juliet, once more, embroidered Romeo being stabbed to death by her, atop Rosaline’s cooling corpse.

It’s not real. Romeo is happy, married to Rosaline. They have a litter of children, little brats with Rosaline’s eyes and Romeo’s talent for getting in places they shouldn’t, or so she has heard.

They don’t visit often. The one time they did, Juliet slipped and almost killed the newborn babe they had brought for her father to meet. They’d discovered her missing from her rooms, and found her on the nursery, holding a pillow most gently to the babe’s sweet face, his nurse bleeding on the floor, stabbed with a needle until she was a pincushion.

After that, the tunnels had been sealed off. Some of them, at least.

The nurse sighs, takes the embroidering circle out of her hands, looking at it for a moment more before shuddering.

“Don’t you tire of it?” The nurses chides, and Juliet cocks her head. “Of all this blood, of all this carnage that permeate your feeble mind?”  
Juliet takes offense: she is not feeble. That, however, is not what is being discussed.

“I will tire of it when he gives me back what is mine.” She replies, and the nurse sighs.

“He cannot. You know this.”

“Then I guess I won’t tire of it, will I?”

* * *

At night, the nurse locks the door. She makes sure Juliet watches it, too. _Click, click._

It does not matter. Juliet simply leaves through the balcony, climbs her way to Ophelia, who is already waiting. Today, she’s simply looking out into the city. Sometimes, if the night is quiet enough, she can hear the gentle murmur of the river.

“Do you regret it, songbird?” Juliet asks, and Ophelia snaps out of her thoughts.

“I regret not killing him after he expelled me from his rooms, as if I were a maidservant. I regret drinking that awful concoction. I regret.” She looks away once more, leans into the balcony. “Do the waters call to you as they call to me?”

“No. Not until I kill him.” 

Beyond the river lays the Montague household, where Romeo lives, unscathed, untouched. She is the only one who bears the scars, who bears the eyes, who bears the wagging tongues. What does Romeo bear? Does Romeo even remember tiny, frail and small Juliet, or have his memories been colored over with Rosaline?

She does not need answers that she already knows.

* * *

At the breakfast table, once more: Ophelia stills tears her bread with her hands. She stares at Juliet’s father, and he does not look at her.

“Lord Capulet.” Ophelia calls, soft voice, when her pale eyes’ stare hasn’t made him look at her. When he looks at her, broken away from a soft, whispered conversation with Juliet’s brother, Ophelia smiles. “Might I request that your daughter, Juliet, accompanies me for a walk in Verona?”

Silence falls on the table. Juliet keeps eating. If they won’t allow her to go, that’s fine. Juliet will just escape from her room once more.

“I don’t think Juliet can go, my lady.” He starts, slow, and then warmly smiles. “But my other daughter, Julia, is available, and would love to show you the city.”

Julia, sweet and caring, does not look to Juliet for more than a passing second, doe-eyed and fearful. Julia, dear Julia, does not look at Ophelia, either; her black eyes are focused on the plate in front of her.

“I think Juliet and I’s temper are more well-suited.” Ophelia insists, and her father looks at Juliet. Juliet looks at him, her hair forming a curtain between her and her father. “Besides, Julia is a child, isn’t she? Ten or so. What could a ten-year-old offer me, in terms of companionship?”

Juliet can tell her father already regrets accepting the offer to house this girl. Lord Capulet smacks his lips, makes them into a thin line, and Ophelia keeps staring, tearing bread into smaller and smaller pieces.

“Very well, then. It’ll be as you wish, my lady.” He sighs, and Juliet smiles through her hair to Ophelia.

* * *

Being outside in the sun feels nice. And the world seems so much bigger, too - bigger than the tall walls of her courtyard, wider than the confines of her room. She stretches herself, ignoring the wide-eyed stares of old gossiping women. They will all speak of her loose hair and beautiful, but out of season, clothes. 

After all, why spend money on more clothes when you won’t allow your child out? Her father is a pragmatic, but it cost him dearly now. Juliet hopes it stings him.

“Verona is…” Ophelia starts, looking around. There’s few people around them: they’re being avoided like the plague. “Odd. Like there is two sides, and the people are clearly, evenly divided.”

Ophelia is right, in a way.

“There’s a war going on Verona.” A beat, accompanied by a bitter laugh. “Was.”

“Was?”

Nodding, Juliet looked at Ophelia, waving to the other side of the river bend.

“The city was divided, you see. This used to be Capulet territory. There, the Montagues.”

She can’t help but spit out the name of that family. It’s her fault everyone is friendly now. Is it?

“A death united you two?” Ophelia asked, pausing in front of a street baker. She trades a few coins for something sweet, and does not wait for change. 

“A wedding.” _Not mine,_ Juliet wants to say, but in a way, she was the catalyst, wasn’t she? It’s thanks to her being a _reckless child_ , a _wanton woman_ , that there is no more fighting between the two families, that Romeo got what he always wanted - Rosaline.

Her loss is everyone’s gain.

“It’s always weddings.” Ophelia nods, and they don’t speak anymore.

* * *

Every night, Juliet climbs the balcony to find Ophelia. Every night, they talk nonsense that makes sense. It’s like decoding a story told in half-lies. 

It’s the most fun Juliet has had since… Well, you know. 

What she can gather from Ophelia, though, is that the new king of Denmark is a piece of shit, melancholic and murderous. To make promises in bed to a woman in love, days before he murdered her father. To mock her disgrace, pretend nothing ever happened, to publicly announce his wedding to someone who isn’t her, when he knows she is watching. To stand and watch as she chews on bitter herbs, to make sure she bleeds and bleeds and _bleeds_. But of all his sins, to kill a man in prayer: isn’t that the highest form of it? Juliet could call it a talent.

But does Juliet have any ground to stand on, in terms of sin? She’s impure, having laid with man before marriage, a failed murderer thrice over (one: the baby in her belly, the period blood thick and unending. Two: Romeo on his wedding day, stealing her father’s sword and slashing him until she saw red bloom from his skin. Three: his son, barely born and she, ready to steal his breath). If the king of Denmark would be able to enter Heaven, then so would she - then so would Ophelia.

And she lets Ophelia into her secrets, too: whispers to her ear when the moon is their only companion, kisses her softly when the stars hang in the sky, heavy and shining brightly. Ophelia is not surprised when their mouths first touch, soft and tasting like rue and pennyroyal. No, she simply looks at her with clear eyes, holds her hands into Juliet’s, and says nothing for what seems like a long time.

The only thing that fills the silence between them is the sounds of the babbling river, distant and close.

“I guess this is not so bad.” She says, and Juliet nods. “You won’t hurt me, cat.”

It isn’t a question.

“Why would I, songbird?” Juliet replies, and Ophelia, with a smile to her face, kisses her, cold hands upon Juliet’s face.

* * *

A fortnight passes before Juliet knows what happened. She blinks when her father, with a more relaxed gait than Juliet has seen him have in the past two weeks, says -

“It’s such a shame your time with us has ended so soon, my lady.” He sighs, over luncheon. Juliet cocks her head, does some quick math in her head and bites a gasp.

Ophelia is still tearing her bread with her hands. She sends Juliet a sad look, and then her attentions turn back to lord Capulet.

“Oh, yes. I fear that Venice awaits me.” She pauses. “Lovely city, or so I’ve heard.”

Lord Capulet scoffs, then integrates it into a laugh. Terrible acting, if Juliet is honest.

* * *

When she gets a break from the nurse hovering over her, Juliet goes to Ophelia. She is in her room, packing slowly. 

“Songbird.” Juliet calls, softly, and Ophelia looks at her. “Would you have me?”

She has said these words to a different person, a lifetime ago. She hates the taste of innocence that bubbles up in her mouth, and swallows it back down.

“Cat.” Ophelia replies, hands in her lap, sitting on the floor amidst a sea of white. “I assume you know how to ride a horse.”

Juliet does.

* * *

Running away from home is easy when you don’t mind throwing your things to the ground to break the fall. So that’s what Juliet does, quietly pulling away her mattress from the frame, throwing it in a carelessly calculated manner.

It falls down with a satisfying _oomph_ , and Juliet nods at a job well done as she goes to grab her bedding, her pillows, throwing it throughout the balcony until she has a cloud to fall on.

She jumps from her balcony, and the rush is - incredible. She would take a moment more to dwell on this, to savor the adrenaline coursing through her veins, but she can hear her father sending Ophelia off. They are at the front of the Capulet household, which means the stables are free for all. Including Juliet.

Juliet steals her own horse, a pack of supplies on her back, a cloak on her shoulders - it’s Romeo’s cape! _Ha_. She’ll burn it later - and sends herself off, no one else but her needed for it.

She is not a guest of honor, after all.

* * *

Ophelia halts the convoy when she sees Juliet, glowing in moonlight, at the side of the road to Venice. She gestures for Juliet to join her, side by side, the Danish guards opening a passage for her, and she does. 

Juliet’s hands find Ophelia’s for a moment.

“I’ve never been to Venice, songbird.” Juliet says, and Ophelia smiles.

“That’s funny, cat. I haven’t, either."

**Author's Note:**

> is it too late to admit i've never read romeo and juliet or hamlet or....................


End file.
